SUNSHINE for me today
by mnemonica
Summary: She is another step closer to the earth.


I wrote this two months ago when it was still raining and then I forgot about it. Found it hanging around in my folders yesterday, fixed it up a little. Here you go, don't laugh at me okok. :X

**title** SUNSHINE for me today  
><strong>pair<strong> Kyoko/Haru, a little 8018  
><strong>rated<strong> pg-15  
><strong>warnings for<strong> GIANT BLOCKS OF TEXT, also nothing i write ever makes sense  
><strong>summary<strong> She is another step closer to the earth.  
><strong>notes<strong> egad 1500 words. bit of a gakuen AU, but could be interpreted as future!fic. first khr fic ever?

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><p><strong>sunshine for me today<strong>

_...And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils._

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><p>It was a little pocket in the park and it only occurred between different bars of daylight, and memories of it slipped into gap junctions and stayed there until they melted. It was a place where you could run laps in your head, jockey ten-second splits across time and space. In the northeast corner you could see wild grass and chrysanthemums and hear thoughts and enunciate clearly without any trouble and in the opposite corner there were poppies and tiger lilies and blurry images, so that when the sun shone down in a particular position it would glow a compelling red, heartfelt and halfway-apologetic and intoxicating to the point of heartache, like you were looking at true love from the bottom of a wine bottle. And then when the campanile thirty degrees from the east was coated from the bottom-up with spots and shimmers and a laugh, there it was. Eight petals peeled away from the sunshine, iridescent and slightly fractured and so impossibly <em>bright<em>that you knew it was completely intangible in any other light. Upon closer examination, the pattern resembled the polar graph of cosine 4θ, eight petals in full bloom and there was nothing more beautiful in the world for her, not even Matsumoto Jun.

("What's she doing there, mom?"

"She's reading, see? She's got a book. Oh gosh, is that Steinbeck? In English, too. What a brave girl. If only you could read half as well, Ryoma, then we wouldn't be having this discussion."

"Mom..."

"Maybe I should send you back to America. Go and play tennis with your father, then. And then you'll attend Princeton with a sports scholarship."

"Mom...!")

At one point she had thought about taking Tsuna-kun there. She did remember telling him about it once, in their last year of junior high and on the day before she had decided to cut her hair and purchase a pin-up magazine with Arashi on the color spread, she did remember telling him about it once and he had bobbed his head up and down and smiled at her before turning around and talking to Gokudera-kun and she kind of knew then that he hadn't really considered it and wouldn't have believed it and didn't have any reason to and of course she didn't want it to seem like it bothered her all that much, so then it didn't and the point slipped its contact by a few millimeters. Or meters. She was terrible at estimation.

It was her special corner in the middle of the city, and she read books and did her calculus homework there sometimes when the weather was nice. It was a relaxing atmosphere and when it was close to raining she might listen to cheesy pop music on her iPod while lying halfway in the grass and halfway in the flowers; it was a relief, she enjoyed it, waited for it, rolled around in it, and at this point her knees would start feeling weak and her eyelids would flutter a little more and she would _think_: how fucking ironic is this.

Halfway in the sunlight, her heart would break.

"Take me there next time," Tsuna said, and Haru never did.

-/-

Three years later, this is what she forgets: the sun, the laughter, three days of feeling like she was worth something more than what Bianchi had given her credit for and three nights of rainfall and knocking her head against wood to see if it was hollow and a dramatic reading of Steinbeck, grimy furniture and land turtles intact. It was quite practical, because there was also a lot of dust in the air. And now it was a good feeling. And now she was a good girl and she didn't crave praise like before. She was in a good high school, fairly elite, on a track to success. Yamamoto-kun went to a nearby high school, and so did Hibari-kun; they stuck to each other in an odd way that simultaneously revolted and appealed to her, and sometimes she walked over to their district in the afternoon and shared her lunch with Yamamoto and the high school baseball team. Yamamoto's buchou was nice to her and she let his hands wander up her skirt when it was raining. And then after the first year living in her mother's house she moved across town and lived by herself and took the shinkansen to school and she was far away from her friends, but it was worth it, because she was receiving an education that would ultimately get her into Keio.

Nothing was worth more than Keio.

"Not even Tsuna-kun?" asked Kyoko.

"Who?"

"You can't be serious," said Kyoko, but it was an evening before cram school and Haru found it unnecessary to provide obvious answers to obvious questions. She had jumped across the first puddle successfully.

But then what happened was, Kyoko leaned over too close.

-/-

And here's a catch: just like trains and washing machines and plots in novels, the music can stop.

Haru's first time went to Sugiyama-kun from the Science Club. She remembered it very vividly because Sugiyama-kun wore glasses that flashed and clicked every time he tried to reposition his dick and it was a little unnerving, but Haru forgave him because it was her first time. Sugiyama-kun expected a relationship after that and it was probably then when Haru began having trouble recalling names and avoiding commitments by climbing into dark corners. So her second time was with a foreigner, a blonde girl who was transfer student from Denmark. She possessed an amazing collection of toys and exotic-smelling lubrications. Her third was the physics teacher, empty classroom on the third floor hallway, fourth time was with Ryuzaki from the tennis team in the locker rooms with the shower stall wide open. Fifth was a girl who worked in her favorite bakery. Her sixth was Yamamoto, and it wasn't a crime. Yamamoto was only experimenting and he told her later that he probably preferred Hibari to girls, no offense (none was taken). Her seventh one was Hibari-kun, who was also only experimenting. She didn't dare breathe a word of it to Yamamoto; she was fashionable enough to avoid wearing visible teeth marks on her uniform.

-/-

"You want to keep visiting me?"

"I would like that."

"I-I think I shall be very busy for the next few weeks. Months, even."

"I'll visit you sometimes, then," Kyoko conceded, and the next year suddenly became crazy. Haru blasted music and played computer games when she wasn't studying and studied when she wasn't playing computer games and the sun would rise and fall like that and she wouldn't care, it was her by herself with herself making herself driving herself and ultimately, this was for herself. Those were the weeks when she felt simultaneously as if she were at the top of the world, only to fall short. She wanted to fall.

She had fallen already.

-/-

"You're sad, Haru, you're really sad," Kyoko told her once.

"Yeah, I know I'm pathetic."

"That's not what I meant."

"But it's what you think."

Kyoko looked away. Her eyes were now permanently fixated on the wall clock. Softly, "Since when did you ever care about what I think, Haru?"

And this is the part where she's supposed to tell Kyoko about it. Only she doesn't because she's Haru and Kyoko is Kyoko and she's seen the bottom of Kyoko's heart like a wine bottle since the first day Kyoko told Haru that she liked Haru more than Tsuna-kun and Haru told Tsuna-kun that she was nursing unrequited, pure and unadulterated love for him, as well.

Maybe it was a great story to tell her children.

-/-

(But there had been a moment.

There had been a moment when a blade of sunlight had worked out for both of them. There had been a moment in between cram school classes outside of baseball practice between making bento boxes inside secret gardens, there had been a moment when it had worked out for both of them, when Kyoko had held Haru's hand and placed it on her forehead and told Haru that she was sick, that she wanted her company, and it was so obvious that she was lying that Haru couldn't help but bring her to the patch of sunshine, and that was when it had worked out, because they had been friends, the best of friends. And there came the day when she took Kyoko to her little patch of sunlight between the grass and the flowers, and that was when she could proudly say that she understood. But then Kyoko leaned over too close and they were both one step closer to the earth.)

-/-

"Who gets to be the black swan, then," said Kyoko, "me or you?"

"You're the better ballerina," said Haru, and she balanced the petal of sunshine against her nose. "And you're definitely psycho. So I vote you."

"What if I vote you?"

"That's not going to work, then."

"No."

"And you're OK with that?"

"I'm OK with that."

"You're too sweet," said Kyoko.

"You aren't sweet enough."

And when Kyoko rolled over and kissed her on the lips, there was still sunlight in the sky.

-/-

end %

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><p>&amp; the subtitle was a quote from William Wordsworth's 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'.<p>

_- thank you for reading! feedback is always much appreciated. =)_


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